


Considerations for a CP Pacific Rim AU

by garden of succulents (staranise)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic), Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Disordered Eating, M/M, contains no Pacific Rim characters, format: not-fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 23:23:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7661200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/pseuds/garden%20of%20succulents
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things to remember about Shatterdome helicopter pilots, and how Jack and Bitty end up in a Jaeger together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Tumblr [here](http://des-zimbits.tumblr.com/tagged/Lis%27s-CP-pacific-rim-AU), which explains why the first chapter isn't written in ordinary prose.

  * The first thing to remember is: one Jaeger with two pilots requires HUNDREDS of support staff.  Not everyone can be a Jaeger pilot the same way not everyone can play center on the starting line of the hockey team.
  * On the other hand a lot of people WANT to be Jaeger pilots.  But until they get their turn in the giant robot they have a lot of other jobs to do. 
    * Mechanics and engineers who keep the robots (and everything else) running
    * Command Centre staff who coordinate defensive missions and training, everything from “the kaiju is RIGHT BEHIND YOU” to “how fast will the helicopters run out of fuel if the fighting stays this intense” to “this battle just created some 20ft waves that will each this little village two hours from now, we have to evacuate them.”
    * Helicopter pilots who do everything from taxi service to [deploying the Jaegers](http://xxpgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Pacific_Rim_Main_Trailer_32.jpg) to[following the Kaiju ](http://www.rotaryaction.com/images/pacfrim7.jpg)(who could SWAT THEM OUT OF THE AIR LIKE FUCKING GNATS) to provide intelligence and illumination to the Jaeger teams
    * Everything else a military base needs: munitions, supplies, housing, training, recreation, HR, everyone down to the goddamn janitors are saving the world.
    * A Training Commander to report directly to the Marshal and oversee the development of new Jaeger pilots and stride around with his hands behind his back looking droopy-eyed and tragic while his established subordinates whisper to the new rookie that he is 50-fucking-percent of the reason Los Angeles still _exists_ , though he hasn’t been in the field in a robot since his breakdown and his old drift partner is fighting out of Malaysia now.


  * So when US Coast Guard helicopter pilot Lt. Eric Bittle gets to the Los Angeles Shatterdome he is absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of camaraderie among the pilots and trainees.  He was expecting it to be absolutely cutthroat vicious competition–there are 2,000 people fighting for a spot to be one of the 200 pilots on base among whom 20 actually get to do live exercises in the Jaeger and only 2 are actually deployed as Jaeger pilots when the Kaiju comes a’callin’.  But everyone is friends and parties together all the time with the frenetic energy of a swing club full of dancers during the London Blitz.
  * That said, he’s also overwhelmed by the increeeedibly high standards.  For everything.  He’s flying his little Southern guts out, endless hours in the sky and every second he isn’t airborne spent studying or training or planning flights or writing mission reports.
  * He is actually kind of grateful that there are SUCH strong contenders for the hot seat ahead of him, Birkholtz and Oluransi are promoted to the base’s top jaeger pilots and he’s so relieved he cries and bakes his MooMaw’s heirloom cookie recipe for their promotion party.  He’s not ready to drive the robot and he knows he isn’t but he wants to be and his whole life is kind of a nightmare these days.
  * Bitty’s an AMAZING pilot.  I have a friend who’s a tactical helicopter pilot in the RCAF (she also flew Prime Minister Trudeau around the ashes of Ft Mac last week, NO BIG) and the thing she always says is basically: Planes? Fundamentally want to fly.  If a plane’s engine craps out it will turn into a glider and you can do something with that.  Helicopters? Fundamentally want to crash.  If a helicopter’s engine craps out or something happens to it, it is now a very expensive _falling machine_.  So Bitty is the kind of pilot who can fly a falling machine around a very angry mutant dinosaur that wants to kill him and gets useful information from it or distracts it usefully, while simultaneously not crashing into the giant robot trying to punch it or the other crazy-ass motherfuckers in helicopters.  And he can do it well enough to beat out 1,800 other pilots just like him, many of them with decades of flight experience on him, and get into this program.
  * He just can’t drift.
  * That is, he _can_  drift, he’s neurologically capable of drifting, apparently his brain is very capable of the tasks the neural interface demands of its pilots, but when you hook him up to another person suddenly he’s struggling to pass his basic competency benchmarks.  He practices and practices with a revolving roster of pilots they pair him with and they build up a neurological profile of people he’s more suited to.  But even at the best of times the moment he links up with another pilot all those wonderful skills, those great hands and feet, that tactical knowledge, all disappear underground.
  * Eventually one morning he shows up to practice (he’s with Shitty right now, Shitty’s okay, he seems to do more okay with Shitty than anyone else) but the room is empty of the normal support crew and the training simulator isn’t prepped.  Training Director Zimmermann is leaning against a table in the empty room, and he says, “Bittle, we need to talk.”
    * Bitty thinks: _This is it.  This is the day I get kicked out of the program.  This is the day they send be back to Georgia._
  * “You’re a great pilot,” Zimmermann says.  “And interpersonally you’re charismatic and a natural leader.  But when it comes to the neural bridge you’re timid and retiring.  If you want to succeed in this program you’ve got to be able to do two things.  One, you’ve got to be able to open up and trust your partner, so you can focus your attention on your physical reflexes and tactical situation instead of being so focused on controlling what goes into the drift.  Two, you’ve got to be willing to be forthright and assertive during the link instead of always waiting for them to initiate and make decisions.  You have good leadership skills and you make good decisions in the cockpit of a helicopter, so now you need to take that with you into the cockpit of a Jaeger.”
    * He says that but he takes TWO HOURS to say that.  He has a Powerpoint.  A very special Eric R. Bittle Powerpoint comparing brain images from top Jaeger pilots and Bitty’s brain during training sessions with Shitty.  Video and transcript of some of his training sessions.  Minute, blow-by-blow evaluations of some of his decisions rendered down to the tenth of a second where Jack points out that when he should be making a judgment call the inhibitory parts of his brain are activating and he looks to his co-pilot instead.
    * Bitty thinks the entire time that he’s going to be kicked out.  He thinks this is the world’s most EXCRUCIATING exit interview.  He honestly wishes Jack had just kicked his dick and thrown him out onto the pavement.  It would have been less painful.
    * So at the end of the “training opportunity” aka “101 ways you suck and do not even remotely compare to the people actually doing the work you want to do”
    * Jack says
    * “So I expect to see you back here tomorrow morning.  We’ll have the machines running, and you and I will begin working on this together.”
    * Bitty is like Ok Fine Thankyou Goodbye halfway out of the door and trying not to cry when he just screeches to a halt and turns around and is like “…what.  did you just say.”
    * Jack looks Incredibly Patient.  “You and I are starting Drift training tomorrow.  Knight’s been reassigned.  Your schedule will stay the same.”
    * Bitty blurts, “You’re not washing me out?”
    * “Not while I can help it, Bittle.  Get on with your day, and see you tomorrow.  Remember to keep hydrated and load up with carbs at breakfast, your brain’s going to be using a lot of energy.”
  * So Bitty spends three months drifting and sparring with Jack Zimmermann.  And most of that three months is Jack very carefully and delicately pulling back, letting Bitty take the lead, getting him used to the rush of enjoyment that comes from making decisions and taking action and being constantly, reciprocally supported by someone who will point out things you missed or ask clarifying questions but still fundamentally _has your back._
  * Official PPDC policy is _super_ lax about Jaeger pilot fraternization because when you spend so much time in somebody else’s head, your bodies doing strenuous work in perfect sync, sometimes you get out of your training gear and just want to throw that person onto the nearest horizontal surface and honestly, it doesn’t hurt the work the pilots do; it makes it better.
  * Jack doesn’t partake, of course.  He’s cool and calm and professional and fastidious, even though when he drifts with Shitty for a class exercise Shitty comes out of it with a raging boner and high on endorphins and throws an arm around Jack’s neck and kisses his cheek.  Jack tolerates it.  But when he’s done himself he just wipes sweat and electrode goo off his head and goes back to his rooms and showers alone.
  * Bitty passes his training modules and gets paired up with Christopher Chow, which is a much better partnership than it’s not.
  * OK I’ve run out of plot points I think I’l leave you all here to suffer.




	2. Chapter 2

The week after the new budget comes out boxes and boxes of new orders arrive at the LA Shatterdome by courier, and group by group every unit and department in the entire building is summoned up to one of the rooms on the fifth floor and disbanded or reassigned.  First the rumours are flying thick and fast and there’s chaos, people having to be shouted into silence so everyone can hear who’s being called over the PA.  As more and more people get their new orders over the day, the base acquires the grief-stricken hush of a shelled-out neighbourhood. 

Bitty and Chowder walk past people sitting in the halls, numbly clinging to each other and crying, rooms of workers who are briskly determined to make the best of it and prepare a staggering amount of supplies and equipment for transport and/or decommissioning.   Somebody offers up a plastic bottle of whiskey.  “We haven’t got our papers yet,” Bitty says, and they nod sagely and say, “Come see me after.”

Marshall Hall dismissed basic facility support staff by the score in one of the lecture theatres, but he sees Jaeger pilots one by one.  Chowder goes first, and Bitty doesn’t see more than his shocky face before he’s being ushered in himself.

He can accept his orders, Hall explains, or choose to return to the Coast Guard without punishment or penalty.  However, due to extraordinary circumstances, the traditional PPDC avenues of appeal will not be open to him.  Then he hands Bitty a paper slip and stands to dismiss him.  Bitty salutes.

Hall stands and returns the salute with the look of a man whose pain only gets deeper every time he has to do it, and he’s done it a lot today.

Chowder’s waiting in the hallway outside Hall’s suite of offices, re-reading his orders.  “They’re assigning me to Hong Kong,” he tells Bitty, reaching out for him blindly.  “I can’t go to Hong Kong!  I don’t speak Cantonese!  Are you coming with me?”

“No,” Bitty says, slinging an arm around Chowder and dragging him back to their quarters.  After waiting all day for the blow to fall and finding it’s just as bad as he feared it would be he’s waiting to feel something, waiting for sadness to happen.  He looks at the paper clutched in his hand again.  “Peru.”

“I can’t, I just—” Chowder stops, puts his hand on the wall, and starts dry-heaving.  He’s crying.  “I need to talk to Caitlin.”

“Yeah, go,” Bitty says blindly.  “Do you need my help—?”

Chowder shakes his head and sets off through the halls at a run.  Bitty stares after him, then sucks in a breath and looks down at his orders again.  A couple careful, steady breaths let his hands stop shaking enough to smooth the paper out and open it again.

It’s a two part message.  One, he’s being posted to a unit whose designations look like an active Jaeger team in the Lima shatterdome, under the command of J. L Zimmermann.  Two, he’s been promoted to full Ranger.

That makes it very easy to know who he wants to talk to now.

* * *

Jack is in his office… packing.  Except as Bitty stands there and watches it doesn’t actually look like packing; it looks like storming around and swearing, throwing small items in a cardboard box and dumping a lot of paper in the garbage and shredding bin.  It looks like Jack worked up into a passionate fury and being too Canadian to do anything about it.  Bitty eventually decides Jack’s not going to notice him and taps his knuckles against the doorway.

Jack does look up, blinking like he has to clear sweat out of his eyes before seeing Bitty.  After a dazed moment he says, “Bittle, come in.”

Bitty stays where he is, hands sliding into his pockets.  “Have you eaten?” he says.

Jack shakes his head in incomprehension.  “What?”

“With a day like this, thought you might forget dinner.  It’s seventeen-hundred right now so you’re due for supper."  Jack continues to stare at him, and starts to shake his head, and Bitty sighs.  

They all of them, as a team, pretend not to know a lot of things about each other.  Drifting isn’t the kind of exclusive and intimate thing it used to be, only between family or lovers or friends; they’ve all been inside each other’s heads, and the same as when you share a common barracks, there’s a lot you pretend not to notice.  So it’s a little rude to point it out, but… Jack is also suddenly the only stable point in his world right now.  The total number of people he has the power to care about or protect has narrowed down to one.  So he balls his hands into fists at the bottom of his pockets and says, "Jack, punishing yourself isn’t going to make any of this less awful.  You deserve to eat.”

Oh, that makes Jack unhappy.  Not pissed off or affronted; it just cuts to the heart of his sadness.  Bitty sighs.  “And you don’t want to go to the mess right now, you just… don’t."  One mess is a heartfelt sing-a-long right now; the other is close to fomenting rebellion, if they can figure out who to rebel against.  "Come up to my room, I’ll fix something.”

“Yeah,” Jack says, looking down at his desk and almost mumbling.  His shoulders are so square and solid, but somehow he looks deflated without bending his spine.  He moves a couple papers out of the way and picks up a tablet.  “Yeah, I don’t want to talk about it in public.”

Bitty doesn’t say anything, but he’s surprised Jack wants to talk at all.  The thing that drifting, that drifting with Jack especially, has shown him is that there’s an earth’s worth of distance between how somebody feels and what they do and say.  You can know that somebody quakes with fear every time they have to give a speech or that they tenderly love the people they serve with, but when they have to step out to address the unit before potentially sending them off to die they act calm, cool, collected, almost cheerful and encouraging.  He _knows_ Jack loves them, loves him, with an intensity that’s almost painful; but at the same time, Jack leaves their parties after half an hour and reads a book in his room.  He finishes a drift session and takes a shower.  The same way he chooses to override the monsters of anxiety and doubt that crawl out of the deepest recesses of his brain, he chooses not to turn his feelings for the people around him into acts of intimacy.

Jack knocks on Shitty’s door as they go past, and they wait at the end of the hallway for Shitty to stick his head out, then wrap a towel around his waist and come out.  “Get Lardo, meet us at Bittle’s room,” Jack says.  Ransom and Holster’s room is open a crack, and Jack sticks his head inside.  “Dinner at Bitty’s?” he asks.  They’re eating microwaved noodle with forks, and gladly put it down to come and join them.  Bittly’s bemused by his sudden presumption; Jack always used to cautiously ask him before even telling an interested guest Bitty was hosting a party they might be invited to, and now Jack’s assuming that of _course_ he can invite people to Bitty’s room and Bitty will gladly cook for them.

He’s _right_ , but it’s still a leap.

As he makes tea and pulls yesterday’s leftovers out of his tiny fridge and begins making fried rice, his room becomes crowded with Jaeger pilots. Jack closes his Bitty’s door and wedges his window open.  They share rumours, information.  Jack and Bitty and half their maintenance crew are going to Lima; Ransom and Holster are going to Anchorage.  Shitty and Lardo are going to Hong Kong.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Bitty says.  “Chowder’s going there too, he was so worried.  He’s gone off to find Caitlin.”

Shitty squints at Jack.  “She coming too?”

Jack unlocks his tablet and does a bit of typing before he finds out.  “Atlantic side.  Research."  He frowns, tapping the edge of the screen with one finger.  "Should she be going to Hong Kong too?”

“Okay, but _how?”_ Bitty asks, whisking eggs around.  “I was told I could refuse or drop out, but there were _no_ appeals.”

Jack shrugs a little helplessly.  “You weren’t on the committee that threw together reassignments.  Engineering staff got posted by algorithm."  He looks a little nervous, like he’s braced for them to turn on him once they find out he was one of the authors of their misfortune.  "I could talk to Engineering, persuade them to move her around.”

Bitty turns his hot plate on low and whips out his phone, because yes, Chowder is surely broken into pieces about being put on the literal other side of the world from his fiancée.  Caitlin’s answer, when Bitty insists on hearing from her, is still an emphatic YES—despite the fact that there’s nothing resembling the Wall of Life around Hong Kong, despite the fact that she was just offered safe and legal housing as far from the Kaiju as you could get.

Meanwhile:  “Shit, that’s where you’ve been all week?” Lardo asks.  “Keeping the lid on this crap?”

Jack’s lips are thin.  “Trying to."  He scrubs a hand through his hair.  "It wasn’t _just_ that they decided to cut staff and reassign everyone now that the Wall’s up here.  There’s also this new staffing model with the jaegers—I don’t know that they aren’t right, but it’s the _worst_ implementation.  They’re saying that it’s not worth bringing teams through training together."  He nods to Rans and Holster to indicate the model they represent.  "Higher burnout rate, lower performance.  No offence.”

“Yeah, we’ll see about that,” Rans says darkly.

“What’s working better so far is staggered teams, especially now that drift technology’s sophisticated enough that we don’t have to pair siblings and stuff like that.  There’s a lot of success matching strangers by neural profile.  So they won’t break up successful teams,” he gestures to Rans and Holtzy again, “but in the future they’re trying to combine experienced pilots with rookies who still have neural plasticity.”

Shitty tightens his arm around Lardo; she looks up at him apprehensively.

Bitty begins dishing rice out into bowls and turns the burner off.  Then he says, tightly, “They’ve accepted that we’re going to lose the Pacific Rim, haven’t they.”

“No,” Shitty says, shocked.  “Just give it up to the Kaiju?  Those fuckers wouldn’t dare, they—”

Jack looks down at his rice while Shitty rants.  When he holds his cup out for more tea he has a quiet and troubled look he saves for Bitty alone.  The entire room debates, except for Jack and Bitty, back and forth and around, until finally they look to Jack to reassure them that no, of course they have to hold the coasts; the Kaiju are amphibious, they can surely come inland.

“They’ll defend the coasts as long as they can,” Jack says down, looking into his teacup.  “But I think Bittle’s right.  I mean, look outside. Los Angeles used to be one of the most populated places on the continent; it’s a ghost town now.  Pretty soon they’re going to legalize interstate resettlement again.  They’re accepting that we won’t be able to move back here.”

“But then what—” Holster starts.

Jack and Bitty share another look and Bitty says, “Nuclear weapons.”

It’s so obvious once he’s said it.  Jaegers had been created as the only safe alternative to using nuclear arsenal against the Kaiju, the only way to fight them without leaving environmental devastation in their wake.  If the Jaeger program is foundering, if the kind of people who run world governments have all fled to the Atlantic or inland, the simple, almost cost-effective, method is to bomb the shit out of it.  And leave the people they didn’t care about to deal with the radiation and Kaiju Blue.

Bitty’s suspected for a long time, but it was one thing to read about a scientist’s speculative plan for it, to see the idea skate across Jack’s mind in the drift, and another to see Jack actually say: _Yes.  That.  Exactly.  You are entirely right about what’s going to happen._

“Shit,” Lardo says weakly.  “What do we do?”

Jack shrugs, looks up, reaches out for more tea with trembling hands.  Bitty pours the cup half-full for him.  “Do what we can.  Fight."  He settles his teacup in both hands and says, "I’m getting back in a Jaeger.”

“ _What?_ ” Shitty exclaims, and, “ _Bro!”_ Holster says, and Jack smiles weakly.  “Who?"  Bitty asks.

Jack looks up at him with a curious little trembling smile.  "Didn’t you read your orders?  With you.”

Bitty drops the cup he’s holding, which clatters and bounces on the countertop and spills tea across it and down the side.  He quickly mops up the spill and checks that the cup has no chips or fractures.

“Y’know what, folks,” Shitty says, standing up.  “I think we need to leave these gentlemen alone to talk.”

The other three agree with alarmed rapidity, although Lardo punches Jack on the shoulder and says, “You _dweeb,_ ” and Shitty puts an arm around Bitty’s shoulders, kisses his cheek, and says, “Come find me after?”  Then they shuffle out and close the door.

Bitty very numbly walks around to sit next to Jack on his bed.  Jack is looking down at his hands.  “With me,” Bitty says.  “You arranged to get paired up with me on purpose?”

“Yes,” Jack says.  He visibly hesitates, his hand twitching, and then reaches over to take one of Bitty’s hands.  When he finds it cold he starts chafing it gently.  “You can always ask for reassignment, that’s still on the table, but there’s almost no one in the world my brain matches with as well as you, and you’re the person I’d most like to–be with.”

Bitty finds drawing breath difficult; the tears that have waited out of sight for him all day are swarming in his eyes now.  “Jack, I don’t know that I–”

Jack moves.  He moves from sitting on the bed next to Bitty to standing on his knees on the floor, holding Bitty’s hands in his.  “Look,” he says.  “I know I haven’t been a good–partner.  I’ve been distant and I haven’t been what you need.  I’ve been more worried about being your instructor, about having power over you, worried that I would… abuse that.  When I didn’t do the things for you that you wanted me to, it wasn’t because I didn’t want to do them, Bitty.”  He squeezes Bitty’s hands.  “I just… have never been sure that I’m the person who would make you happy if I actually did them.”

Bitty sniffs and takes a hand away to wipe the tears out of his face a couple times before giving his hand back.  “Lord,” he says with a gusty sigh, then wipes his nose with his wrist.  Jack carefully reaches up to lay his hand against Bitty’s cheek, wiping another tear away with his thumb.

“What I’ve learned about Jaeger pilots,” Jack says, hand still lightly resting against Bitty’s face, “is that it doesn’t matter how well we fight if we can’t be kind to each other.  I’m not sure how well I can do that, but I promise you. I _promise_  you, if you come with me, I will do my best to take care of you.  I will do everything I can to make you feel loved.  Because I.”  Jack’s thumb ghosts over Bitty’s lips and he looks down at them for a moment before meeting Bitty’s eyes again.  “I do love you.”

There are a thousand layers of meaning under everything Jack says.  Bitty knows about co-pilots without kindness; he knows how Jack felt about Kent Parson, a kind of fevered love and attachment so strong he’d pull himself through hell after it without ever feeling protected or cared for or safe.  

He knows how Jack feels about him, an affection that almost borders on adoration for the smallest, _stupidest_  things, for Bitty cutting cookies with an upturned glass, for the way he dances when he’s getting ready to suit up.

He knows that Jack can feel the things Bitty craves, the skin-hunger and desire to be desired, the feeling for Jack that can make a pat across the back from him more satisfying than sex with anybody else.  He knows hat when Jack is talking about _things you want me to do to you_  he actually knows what Bitty’s picturing in very specific detail.

He knows that this feels like more than a proposal, with Jack on his knees in front of him.  It feels like a marriage vow.  It’s not about thoughts or feelings; it’s about the actions they are taking, the decisions they have made.

“Yes,” Bitty says.  “Me too.”

He takes Jack in his arms and kisses him, again and again, and doesn’t want to ever stop.


End file.
